OAN Staff Addie Davis and Brooke Mallory
3:40 PM – Monday, June 8, 2026

President Donald Trump renewed his pressure on Senate leadership to oust Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, leveraging allegations of left-leaning bias to blame the arbiter for the procedural gridlock stalling the Save America Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act).

The escalation follows MacDonough’s enforcement of the Byrd Rule, which barred Republicans from bypassing a Democrat filibuster by attaching the non-budgetary voting restrictions to a fast-track, simple-majority reconciliation package.

The Byrd Rule is named after the now-deceased former Senator Robert C. Byrd, a long-time West Virginia Democrat who previously led a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter in the 1940s.

When MacDonough enforced the Byrd Rule — which strips out non-budgetary “extraneous” policy from fast-tracked reconciliation bills — it triggered a massive domino effect. Since the GOP held a slim majority in the Senate, losing the ability to bypass a 60-vote Democrat filibuster meant several marquee conservative priorities were abruptly dismantled.

 

However, the voting restrictions were only the tip of the iceberg.

MacDonough held a series of closed-door “Byrd Baths,” the process of cleaning out non-compliant policy, and stripped out multiple provisions that Republicans had hoped to pass with a simple majority.

• Medicaid and Healthcare: She blocked provisions meant to bar Medicaid funds from covering transgender hormones and surgeries for minors, as well as a ban on illegal aliens and other non-citizens receiving Medicaid or CHIP coverage. Most notably, she struck down a restriction on state healthcare provider taxes, which completely erased hundreds of billions of dollars in expected budget savings.

• Safety Net Restrictions: A food aid measure that would have forced U.S. states to pay a larger percentage of SNAP (food stamp) benefit costs if they had high administrative error rates was ruled to be a policy change rather than a budget item.

• Federal Oversight: She blocked a push to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and nixed provisions that would have dissolved the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune should immediately fire the Parliamentarian, who treats Republicans, and everything that they stand for, horribly! She was put there by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Barack Hussein Obama, need I say more? She is a nasty holdover from Mitch McConnell (A man who has proven to be vey disloyal to John Thune!), who decided to keep her because he loved giving Trillions of Dollars to the Democrats, but for the Republicans, including the Wall, where I ended up having to go ‘around him’ to build over 1,000 Miles, and close up our Open Border, he gave NOTHING!” Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday.

 

Trump also maintained that MacDonough remained the primary obstacle to the SAVE America Act, a legislative push to mandate documentary proof of citizenship for federal voting registration.

“She is known as a Radical Left Lunatic that caters to Democrats, and has no respect for Republicans, or Republican Ideology. Just the other night, as an example, she ruled against us on a proposal that would have easily been approved, and should have been, by anyone else. We have the right to change her, and should do so, IMMEDIATELY. As long as she’s there, we will never get our desperately needed, SAVE AMERICA ACT, approved, and put into full force and effect!” he concluded.

The Senate Parliamentarian is supposed to serve as the nonpartisan adviser on rules and procedures for the upper legislative body. In 2012, MacDonough was appointed by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

 

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